Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, Jakarta – An observer with the Asian Network for Free and Fair Elections (Anfrel), which monitored the East Timor independence vote in 1999, testified Wednesday that the referendum was "fair".

Jakarta – A former East Timor police chief cried as he told a commission on Wednesday that he was powerless to prevent deadly violence from raging in the country during its 1999 vote for independence.

Dili – Foreign troops securing East Timor found a gun, other weapons and cash in a convoy of cars carrying ruling Fretilin party officials Wednesday, presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta claimed.

Hamish McDonald – They have been conspicuously absent so far, but two of Indonesia's generals yesterday spoke to the Sydney inquest into the deaths of five Australian-based newsmen at Balibo in 1975. Unfortunately, it was far from a live appearance.

Belinda Tasker, Sydney – The Balibo Five were shot by Indonesian military chiefs after trying to surrender, and had their blood smeared on a painting of an Australian flag, a coronial inquest has heard.

Sydney – A former telephone operator has told an inquest she overheard details about the fatal shooting of five Australian-based newsmen in East Timor in 1975.

Vicky Burchill-Hunt told the inquest into the death of Brian Peters, one of the five men killed at Balibo, that she listened in to a phone call from Dili to a reporter in Melbourne 32 years ago.

Havana – Cuban doctors serving in East Timor have already made more than one million patient consultations, reported Dr. Alberto Rignak Vaz, coordinator of Cuba's international medical brigade in East Timor. Dr. Rignak noted that the Cuban physicians have carried out 1,720 operations, have assisted some 8,100 women during childbirth and have rehabilitated nearly 6,300 patients.

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam – The horrendous crimes committed in East Timor in 1999 continue to haunt Indonesia.

Jill Jolliffe – The high level of instability afflicting East Timor since independence in May 2002 has its international partners wondering whether the new nation is suffering more than post-independence growing pains. Perhaps, they speculate, it is time to declare it a basket case.

Dili – Timor Leste's President Xanana Gusmao was elected the chairman of a controversial new political party on Monday.

Gusmao was the sole candidate for the chairmanship of the new organisation, the National Congress of Reconstruction of Timor (CNRT), which has already drawn criticism from a rival party.

Dili – East Timor interim premier Estanislau Da Silva has accused prime minister and presidential candidate Jose Ramos Horta of having shown contempt for the country's institutions when he unilaterally called off the hunt for renegade general Alfredo Reinado.

Mark Dodd – A damaging rift has opened between East Timor's two rival presidential candidates over the treatment of a group of army mutineers whose demands for military reform a year ago brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Sandy George, Film writer – It has taken four years to work out how to turn the story of the Balibo Five, the TV newsmen killed in East Timor on October 16, 1975, into a feature film. But director Robert Connolly (The Bank, Three Dollars) is confident filming can begin.

Jose Ramos-Horta has won the backing of a key powerbroker ahead of next month's presidential vote in East Timor by agreeing to call off a manhunt for a fugitive rebel soldier wanted by Australian troops, party officials have said.

Keiji Hirano, Tokyo – Human right groups in Japan and East Timor have launched a campaign to donate history teaching materials to the newly independent nation that focus on the struggles of women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Ahmad Pathoni, Dili – Portuguese is one of the two official languages in East Timor, but you can hardly hear it spoken in the streets of the young nation.

The tiny country was a Portuguese colony for more than three centuries, but only an estimated 5 percent of its one million people now speak the European language.

Richard Baker – A former senior Australian Government negotiator has criticised a controversial new treaty between Australia and East Timor that fails to permanently establish a maritime boundary between the two countries.

Tito Belo, Dili – East Timor Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta met with a rebel representative on Thursday to discuss an end to a military operation against a fugitive army renegade.

Max Lane – "The PST has increased its vote slightly on its results in 2000", Avelino Coelho da Silva, secretary-general of the Socialist Party of Timor, told Green Left Weekly by telephone from Dili.

Dili – East Timor officials have said they have found more discrepancies in last week's presidential election while stressing the poll's outcome will remain unchanged.

Some votes counted in the poll, the first since the impoverished nation gained its independence in 2002, would be re-checked amid concerns of irregularities, they said.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – The first indication there would be problems with East Timor's presidential election came days before when Martinho Gusmao, a key member of the organising commission, publicly endorsed the rising star of the country's politics, Fernado "Lasama" de Araujo.

Dili – The confusion surrounding the first round of voting in East Timor's presidential election mounted Saturday when the election commission said a district with 100,000 eligible voters had produced three times as many votes.

Dili residents are angry about the latest Australian military operations, apparently undertaken to increase pressure on the fugitive Major Alfredo Reinado.

Eight Reinado family members were detained during a night-time raid on their central Dili home on Monday, a move prompting criticism from human rights watchdog Yayasan Hak.

Ahmad Pathoni, Dili – East Timor's election commission rejected on Thursday calls for a vote recount as the tiny nation looked set for a presidential run-off between Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta and the ruling Fretilin Party's candidate.

Tony Eastley: Doubts are being raised about the fairness of the Presidential election in East Timor with claims of vote manipulation and voter intimidation.

The accusations come from five of the eight candidates. The Electoral Commission says it won't investigate though until it receives a formal complaint.

Dili – An East Timor human rights group said Thursday it had received reports that supporters of the troubled nation's ruling party had intimidated voters ahead the country's presidential election.

"We have reports from the districts and we noted an increase of violence from Fretilin members," said Jose Luis de Oliveira, of the human rights group Yayasan HAK.

Abdul Khalik, Dili – Opening his math book, Manuel da Silva, 17, discovered he had something to clarify before he could finish the homework his teacher had given him.

"I don't understand question number three," he told his teacher in Indonesian, his eyes not moving from his Indonesian-language textbook

['Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand's Complicity in the Invasion and Occupation of Timor-Leste' by Maire Leadbeater. 280 pages $34.99Craig Potton Publishing.]

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese queued for hours under a blazing sun yesterday to choose a new president in the first election wholly run by the young country.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – East Timorese voted in record numbers yesterday in a peaceful election for president. There were few signs of violence, particularly in Dili where politically motivated gangs have been fighting pitched battles for months.

Joe Humphreys – It is the first such ballot since the country gained independence in 2002 – after 21/2 years of transitional rule by the UN, and a 24-year occupation by an often brutal Indonesian military.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – Jose Ramos Horta went to Easter mass at the weekend with "a host of sins" to confess, not least of which was having entertained lustful thoughts towards the film star Jennifer Lopez while presenting her with a prize in Berlin last year.

Ahmad Pathoni, Dili – East Timorese streamed to the polls on Monday to vote for a new president, hoping the election can help end deep divisions after a year of instability in one of the world's youngest and poorest nations.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – Leading candidates in East Timor's presidential election have accused each other of manipulating tomorrow's vote as officials race to deliver ballot papers to 500 polling centres, many of them in remote villages.

John Aglionby, Dili – When East Timor's 600,000 voters head to the polls Monday for the first round of a presidential election they do so aware that their choice will resonate far beyond which of eight candidates they select to fill the largely ceremonial position.

Damien Kingsbury – Those who view East Timor's politics as largely benign describe the mood before tomorrow's presidential election as "dynamic". Those who view the situation more ominously describe the environment as "fluid". Either way, it is likely that the outcome expected just a few days ago has been thrown into doubt.

John Martinkus – There was a moment this week in Dili when it looked as though the increasingly bitter race for the presidency would spill over into violence.

On Thursday afternoon, as supporters of Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta gathered to attend a rally, a convoy of rival Fretilin supporters drove past.

It's five years on from independence, and as the troubled country gears up for Monday's elections, people there tell Joe Humphreys how they see the future.

Fabio Scarpello – Fiery campaigner Ceu Lopes, 50, was active during her fledgling nation's 24-year struggle against the occupation by Indonesia.

Dili – Half the candidates in East Timor's presidential poll said Friday they fear many attempts have been made to manipulate the election process ahead of Monday's vote.

Karen Michelmore, Dili – The distinctive buzz of motorcycles can be heard in the distance, growing increasingly louder.

Within seconds more than 30 motorbikes, engines revving and adorned with party flags and posters, spill into the dilapidated compound, the headquarters of East Timor's major political party, Fretilin, in the capital Dili.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – East Timorese resistance hero Xanana Gusmao has promised he will unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue held in a New York escrow bank account if he is elected prime minister.

London – Candidates in Timor-Leste's presidential election on April 9 should publicly commit to addressing the country's human rights problems and propose needed institutional reforms, Human Rights Watch said today.

Mario de Queiroz, Lisbon – With less than a week to go to the presidential elections in East Timor, the violence has not let up in this small island nation that was born in May 2002 after nearly five centuries of Portuguese colonial rule and 25 years of brutal occupation by Indonesia.

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam – Former president B.J. Habibie has often been synonymous with unpredictability. For a decade he was seen as Soeharto's crown prince loyalist, yet, as president, he introduced press freedom, freed political prisoners, initiated real autonomy for the regions, held free elections and presided over an orderly succession of head of state.

Max Lane – East Timor's presidential election campaign is now officially underway. Voting will be held on April 9. Max Lane spoke by phone with presidential candidate Avelino Coelho, secretary-general of the Socialist Party of Timor (PST).

What issues are people raising with you in your campaign?

Dili – The candidates for next week's East Timor presidential election should publicly commit to addressing the country's human rights problems and propose reforms, a rights group said Wednesday.

"Institutional weaknesses in the police, military and judiciary have fuelled the current crisis in Timor-Leste," Human Rights Watch researcher Charmain Mohamed said.

Ahmad Pathoni, Dili – A former East Timorese independence fighter jailed by Indonesia for six years pledged on Wednesday to unite his conflict-torn country and bring justice to its people, as the final day of election campaigning was marred by violence.

Fernando de Araujo, whose nom de guerre was La Sama, is among eight candidates running in Monday's presidential poll.

Rod McGuirk, Dili – Machete-wielding gangs roam the dusty streets of Asia's newest nation, torching homes and shooting each other as international troops struggle to keep order. Nearly 40,000 refugees remain in crowded camps, too afraid to return home.

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, Jakarta – A number of human rights monitoring groups have accused the recently-completed second phase of Indonesia-Timor Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) hearings of having distorted facts regarding human rights violations that occurred during Timor Leste's 1999 referendum.